


In dreams

by imsfire



Series: Cassian week 2018 prompts [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Backstory, Dreams, Fest, Gen, Memories, Nightmares, childhood home, implied future rebelcaptain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 00:55:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15401388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Memories of Fest surface in Cassian's dreams.  Sometimes they are good dreams, sometimes not...





	In dreams

**Author's Note:**

> For day one of Cassian Appreciation Week run by @thefulcrumcaptain on tumblr: prompt "Dream".

For the rest of his life he sees it in dreams sometimes.  It’s never quite the same as he remembers, such is the way of the sleeping mind, but even inverted or burned-out or overgrown and made green, it’s a landscape familiar as the line of his own forearm, the scar on the back of his wrist, the sensation of his fingers gripping cold metal. 

Like the view in the ‘fresher mirror some mornings, it troubles him, when he dreams of home.  Troubles him the more because he knows he’s helpless to do anything about it.  His dreams are the one thing he cannot discipline himself out of seeing.

His eyes in the reflection will go on being anxious, will slowly grow unhappy and then grim and finally stone-cold weary of it all.  His childhood home in his dreams will go on being the place where safety and danger are inextricably bound, where what was and what will never be again twine round him, their teeth puncturing his heart, crushing him like a vine.

There’s a house, sometimes, a place where all the doors are high and chairs and beds are to be clambered onto rather than sat down upon from above.  He runs from room to room, and sometimes it’s a game, an endless happy hide-and-be-sought where the voices following after are laughing and full of love.  Sometimes it’s a mystery, as he searches and explores, uncovers hidden spaces, secret hiding places, passageways opening up under the clothes-cupboard, behind the roof-stairs.  He hangs back and contents himself with knowing the secret cupboard is there, or he goes on; into the narrowing space, ever more constricted, but Cassian worms forward, on his knees, on his belly, squirming, barely able to breathe but going on just the same, into the dark and the confinement and the terror.

Sometimes he’s outside the house when he dreams; sometimes he’s sitting on the duracrete wall with his family, all of them swinging their legs, hugging one another; or he’s running around the streets and the snow-fields with friends whose eyes are joyful though their names are dim.  Playing chase-and-freeze, playing catch-me, climbing roofs and rocks, playing smashbol or futbol. 

They form teams, their families cheer them on. 

Sometimes the dream turns into a nightmare as one team falls sick, goes missing, attacks with fists or teeth or guns.

There’s the valley below the housing urbanisation, and the narrow snowy road winding through it, off downhill and into the distance; there’s the dark smoke of the refinery on the eastern road, the tracks of the mining trucks coming in from south and south-west.  Their hard-rimmed front wheels and monster tank treads ground the snow and the ore-dust together; the road is a long smear of  charcoal and grey-blue sludge, churned and re-frozen in ankle-breaking ruts.  In his dreams Cassian slogs along the mine-road, trying to get further away from the refinery chimney, because he knows the soldiers are coming, or it’s going to blow, or because his parents have run away and taken Sofia, and he has to catch up with them before nightfall.  But night does fall, and he’s still on the frozen road, alone as he will be alone, forever.

Sometimes there are dreams where he has to break into the refinery.  For some reason they are the ones that scare him most.  He’ll find himself standing looking up at its towering bulk, sweating despite the cold, knowing that Mama and Papa have absolutely forbidden him ever to go inside because _It’s too dangerous in there for a little one, Cassian, mijo, promise me you won’t try to sneak inside_ ; but inside that hideous grey building is something, sometimes some _one_ , too precious for him ever to turn away from, leave behind, fail to follow after.  He goes to the gate, willing himself to be invisible, he climbs in through a window miraculously open, or flies in on stolen steel wings and lands on the roof next to the great smoke-stack.  He has to do something though he can never tell what; find something, or someone, keep trying, never give up.

He wakes whimpering and gulping for breath.  The refinery dream, again.  That was a bad one. 

Pulls himself out of his bunk to haul on yesterday’s shirt, and drink the near-viscous dark kaf the droid has brewed, and gathers his energy for the next mission.


End file.
